Jaliya de Silva

Background

Jaliya de Silva is a Lecturer in Business whose work bridges over a decade of international industry experience with an active research agenda in tourism studies. His career has spanned the private and public sectors across Sri Lanka, France, and the United Kingdom, and this global grounding shapes both his teaching philosophy and scholarly interests.

Jaliya holds a BA (Hons) in International Hotel Management and an MBA in Tourism Management, both from UK institutions, alongside an MSc in Tourism Destination Development from Sweden and a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education. He is currently completing his PhD in Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Wale Trinity Saint David. His PhD research examines the intersection of dark tourism, memory politics, and post-conflict identity in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.

His research sits at the intersection of tourism geographies, place identity, and visitor experience, with a particular focus on how communities construct and communicate identity through heritage and place. This work contributes to both theoretical debate and applied practice within tourism studies.

Prior to entering academia, Jaliya held managerial roles in the hospitality sector across three countries. He draws directly on this professional experience in his teaching, connecting academic frameworks to the realities of industry practice and bringing an internationally informed perspective to the classroom.

Specialist Subjects

Hospitality Business Strategy and Decision Making
Hospitality Marketing and Customer Experience Management
Destination Planning and Sustainable Tourism Development
Strategic Management
Destination Marketing and Branding
Contemporary Issues in Global Tourism
Research Methods

Professional and/or Research Experience

Jaliya's research critically examines the intersections of tourism, identity, and social equity, with a particular focus on structural inequalities embedded within the hospitality and tourism sectors. A central strand of his work investigates gender disparities in hospitality leadership, exploring the systemic barriers that constrain women's progression into senior roles, the institutional cultures that normalise pay inequity, and the organisational dynamics including gendered expectations around emotional labour and visibility that continue to limit career advancement despite growing policy attention.

His research extends to niche and emerging tourism domains including dark tourism, agritourism, and LGBTQ+ tourism, where he analyses socio-cultural implications, contributions to sustainable development, and the power relations that shape narrative, identity, and belonging in heritage and tourism contexts. His current doctoral research deepens this focus through an empirical investigation of dark tourism, memory politics, and post-conflict identity in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, examining how competing narratives of the civil war are constructed, contested, and experienced across state-curated memorial sites and Tamil community spaces.

Qualifications

Languages Spoken

English